WHEN THE TWERMS CAME
WE NOW KNOW (little consolation though this provides) that the Twerms
were Heeing from their hereditary enemies the Mucoids when they first
detected Earth on their far ranging Omphalmoscopes. Thereafter, they
reacted with astonishing speed and cunning.
In a few weeks of radio-monitoring, they accumulated billions of words
of electro print from the satellite Newspad services. Miraculous
linguists, they swiftly mastered the main terrestrial languages; more
than that, they analysed our culture, our technology, our
political-economic systems our de fences Their keen intellects, goaded
by desperation, took only months to identify our weak points, and to
devise a diabolically effective plan of campaign.
They knew that the U.S. and the USSR.
possessed between them almost a tera ton of warheads. The fifteen
other nuclear powers might only muster a few score gigatons, and
limited deliver systems, but even this modest contribution could be
embarrassing to an invader. It was therefore essential that the
assault should be swift, totally unexpected, and absolutely
overwhelming. Perhaps they did consider a direct attack on the
Pentagon, the Red Fort, the Kremlin, and the other centers of military
power. If so, they soon dismissed such naive concepts.
With a subtlety which, after the event, we can now ruefully appreciate,
they selected our most compact, and most vulnerable, area of
sensitivity.... Their insultingly minuscule fleet attacked at 4 A.M.
European time on a wet Sunday morning.
The weapons they employed were the irresistible Psychedelic Ray, the
Itching Beam (which turned staid burghers into instant nudists), the
dreaded Diarrhea Bomb, and the debilitating Tumescent Aerosol Spray.
The total human casualties were thirty-six, mostly through exhaustion
or heart failure.
Their main force (three ships) attacked Zurich.
One vessel each sufficed for Geneva, Basle, and Berne. They also sent
what appears to have been a small tugboat to deal with Vaduz.
No armor plate could resist their laser-equipped robots. The scanning
cameras they carried in their ventral pa lps could record a billion
bits of information a second. Before breakfast time, they knew the
owners of every numbered bank account in Switzerland.
Thereafter, apart from the dispatch of several thousand special
delivery letters by first post Monday morning, the conquest of Earth
was complete.